Field
Embodiments consistent with the present invention generally relate to systems and methods for repairing corrupted files, and more specifically to a system and method for remote correction of invalid contact file syntax.
Description of the Related Art
Users of computing devices (e.g., laptops, tablets, cellular phones, and personal digital assistants) often share electronic address books. Protocols are designed to allow users to access and share contact data. However, vendors are not always entirely compliant when using the protocols. When sharing an address book of contacts between two devices, the address book is exported from a source device, and is transmitted to a target device where the address book is imported. The imported address book may be incomplete or corrupted if for example, the database where the address book is stored on the source device is corrupted.
Alternatively, and more likely, the address book data is technically correct; however, the target device does not recognize, for example, special characters in the contact information that are recognizable to the source device. This is often the case when the address book is shared across different vendors, for example from a SAMSUNG® device to an APPLE® device. For example, many devices are unable to recognize special characters/symbols such as a tilde (˜) character. On such devices, attempting to import the special character/symbol in a contact string may cause the contact information to be truncated, leaving an incomplete contact entry. For example, the contact name may be blank, which causes a problem when the contact is accessed on the target device. As such, the contact becomes difficult or impossible to use.
Currently, to resolve these import/export issues, the software vendor updates the import software for each discovered issue. However, this is inconvenient for both the software developer who must update the software as well as the end-user who must download the updated software. In addition, software updates may only be performed quarterly or biannually, leaving an end-user to deal with the issue until a next software update is released. This is an unacceptable solution for millions of end-users.
A need therefore exists for systems and methods for remote correction of invalid contact file syntax.